Tuesday

Sep 25, 2018 at 4:33 PMSep 26, 2018 at 11:29 AM

Attendance records only mark Swampscott resident Anthony Amore present for 1 1/2 out of a total 10 Town Meetings in which he’s so far been qualified to vote over his two, three-year Town Meeting terms.

In the 2018 election cycle, the Massachusetts Republican Party nominee for secretary of the commonwealth, Anthony Amore, has campaigned on his local service as a two-time elected Swampscott Town Meeting member representing Precinct 2.

Swampscott Town Meeting attendance records examined by the Swampscott Reporter, however, indicate Amore did not attend any of the seven Town Meetings staged in his first three-year term, from April 2008 to April 2011.

These public documents are not only published in town reports, but are also on file with Swampscott Town Clerk Susan Duplin.

“During his first term as an unpaid town meeting member, Anthony Amore's attendance at Town Meeting was impacted by his obligations to his young family and his work investigating the 1990 heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, much of which takes place in the evening,” said Amore’s campaign manager, Mark Steffen, in an emailed statement to the Reporter on Tuesday afternoon.

"We believe that the people of Massachusetts can sympathize with balancing a desire to volunteer with the need to attend to personal and professional priorities," Steffen said.

After a six-year hiatus, Precinct 2 voters elected Amore to a second three-year term that began in April 2017 and expires in April 2020.

In the three Town Meetings since voters elected him to a second term, Duplin’s office said Amore attended the 2017 Annual Town Meeting’s first night on Monday, May 15, but not the second night on Tuesday, May 16.

He attended the Monday, Nov. 7, 2017 Special Town Meeting, but attendance records mark him as absent from the 2018 Annual Town Meeting, convened on Monday, May 21 and Tuesday, May 22.

Attendance records only mark Amore present for 1 1/2 out of a total 10 Town Meetings in which he’s so far been qualified to vote over his two, three-year Town Meeting terms.

Steffen said Amore “remains proud of his participation in his elected civic obligations and was humbled that the voters of Swampscott saw fit to elect him to a second term, during which he continues to participate as much as possible.”

Unlike Massachusetts towns with an open Town Meeting format, such as neighboring Marblehead, Swampscott Town Meeting -- with its 324 elected members -- functions like a mini-republic and constitutes the legislative body in Swampscott’s local government.

Voters in each of Swampscott’s six precincts elect 54 members who represent their interests on Town Meeting floor, voting on elected officials’ salaries, bylaws and budgets.

On average, 18 three-year terms per precinct open in April, when Duplin stages Swampscott’s annual town election. And after local elections, Duplin said members are informed in myriad ways that they must check in when they arrive for Town Meeting.

Weeks before every Town Meeting, Duplin said members “get the warrant in the mail, listing the Town Meeting’s articles, date and time.”

The information sent to members details the check-in process, noting “the required identification badge is to be picked up at the auditorium entrance” before entering Town Meeting.

When members arrive in the Swampscott High School lobby before heading into the auditorium for Town Meeting, Duplin said signs further prompt members to check-in.

“Please remember that it is your responsibility to be recorded as being present with the door checkers prior to entering the auditorium for each session,” Duplin writes in a "notes" section of the mailed Town Meeting warrant packet. “Excessive absences are cause for removal from Town Meeting membership.”

‘Hollow credit’

Amore was the uncontested secretary of state candidate in Massachusetts’ Tuesday, Sept. 4 Republican primary and emerged from that election with the party’s nomination.

Amore is not only the high-profile Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum security director, but also a former Department of Homeland Security official.

In March, he announced he would seek the secretary of state nomination. In doing so, he dropped his political challenge against state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, in the Nov. 6 general election.

He is now running to unseat 24-year incumbent Secretary of State William F. Galvin, D-Boston, for a four-year term as a constitutional officer with many duties.

Overseeing public records, corporations, Massachusetts archives and historical commission are among the office’s duties, but perhaps chief among them: Administering the commonwealth’s elections as the state’s chief elections officer.

“As secretary of state,” said Steffen on Amore’s behalf, “he will perform all the duties of his office, which will be his full-time job, and focus on providing effective and efficient services to the people of the commonwealth.”

When the Swampscott Reporter pointed out Amore’s Town Meeting attendance to Galvin, he said it was “puzzling.”

“I’m a bit surprised he missed so many,” he said in a phone interview with the Reporter on Tuesday afternoon. “Town Meeting members are expected to show up. That’s the condition you make when you signed up and ran: You show up.”

Several media outlets, including this one, have mentioned Amore’s Swampscott Town Meeting service in coverage leading up to the Sept. 4 state primary; one online publication even included his Town Meeting-member status in a story’s headline.

In Amore’s biography section, his campaign website reads: “Anthony is also serving his second term as a Town Meeting member and previously served on the Swampscott Historical Commission.”

Galvin described Amore’s campaigning on his Town Meeting service as “taking hollow credit if you didn’t show up.”